Abandon - Crouch Blake (электронная книга TXT) 📗

“We arrived in Abandon this afternoon, a team of six. Downstairs in the foyer is the third remaining member of our party. Tonight, while we were exploring the town, those men in masks took us hostage. They killed our guide and a man named Emmett.”

“Tell me the names of the men who attacked you.”

Abigail had to think for a moment, her mind edging into overdrive. “Isaiah. Stu . . . and Jerrod. Jerrod was also one of our guides on the hike in. But they’re dead now.”

“All?”

“Yes.”

“How’d the other two die?”

“Isaiah and Jerrod fell off a cliff near the pass a couple hours ago.”

“What were you doing up there in this storm?”

Abigail hesitated only a second or two. “Looking for these gold bars. Did you kill Stu?”

The man nodded slowly.

“What happened to you?” Abigail said. “Your face—”

“Is it bad?”

“Yeah.”

“You two look pretty banged up yourselves.”

The man lowered the machine pistol. He stepped out from behind the divan, walked into the beam of her headlamp, tall and very thin, though even through the bruises, he had gentle eyes, which Abigail instinctively trusted. His silver-and-black down coat appeared to have been ripped through the middle by a knife swipe, and his stringy brown hair lay pasted with sweat to the sides of his face.

“I’m Quinn,” he said.

“Abigail.” Though it was difficult to tell with all the bruising, she placed his age around forty.

Her father stepped forward. “Lawrence.”

“Lawrence Kendall?”

“Have we met?”

Quinn smiled. “No, but I’m an admirer of your work.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I’ve been in the history department at the U of A, Tucson, the last seven years. This ghost town’s been my passion for a long time.”

“Thought I was the only one. What’s your last name?”

“Collins.”

“Haven’t heard of you.”

“I’ve only published in my field, Colonial America and the Revolutionary War. Abandon’s more like a hobby, I guess.”

“Last great mystery of the West.”

“Absolutely. But I just got tenure this year, so I’m hoping to get funding and support for a semester of real study. Maybe even a grant to come here for a summer.”

“Good luck getting a permit for that.”

“Yeah, my attitude’s been, Fuck the Forest service. I’ve been coming up from Arizona every year to spend time in this canyon, do a little elk hunting on the side. But it’s a real thrill to meet you, Lawrence.” Quinn reached out to shake his hand. “I’ve read everything you’ve written on Abandon.”

FIFTY-ONE

 T

hey came upon June at the base of the steps. She was standing by her husband, one hand on the banister that had run through him, the other caressing his shaved head.

“Just us, June,” Abigail said.

She glanced up at them, void of expression, catatonic.

“Who’s that with you?” she asked.

“This is Quinn. He was being held here by Isaiah and Stu.”

Quinn froze when he saw Emmett, brought his hand to his mouth, whispered, “Oh God. June, is it? I’m so sorry. Is there anything—”

“No, there isn’t. I just need to be alone with him.”

Abigail touched her arm, said, “Maybe you should—”

“No! Go!”

They left June with her husband and sat down nearby on the cascading staircase that flowed toward the large oak doors.

Abigail pulled three water bottles out of Lawrence’s pack and rolled two of them across the floor to Quinn.

“Thank you.” Quinn unscrewed the cap and ravenously downed the entire twelve ounces in one long gulp. Then he leaned back against the steps and gingerly ran his fingers across his face as if reading Braille, trying to picture how the damage had distorted it.

“Isaiah did that?” Abigail asked.

“Quite a violent streak in that man.”

“So what, exactly, happened to you?”

Quinn opened the second bottle of water and took another long drink. “I arrived in Abandon last Wednesday morning. Wednesday night, very late, I woke to the sound of footsteps near my tent. Frightened me pretty bad. I called out, asked who was there. No one answered. Of course, I couldn’t go back to sleep, so I unzipped the tent and crawled outside. There were two men in masks with guns standing there.”

He shivered, as if just speaking about it rekindled the fear. “Isaiah and Stu brought me to this mansion. They kept demanding that I show them where ‘it’ was. I told them I had no idea what they were talking about. They said I was lying. They beat me. Tied me up and left me in one of the rooms on the third floor. Several times a day, they’d come back, ask if I wanted to tell them or if I needed another beating. I would always say the same thing: I didn’t know what it was they wanted.

“Tonight, after working me over for a while, they blindfolded me and slapped a piece of tape on my mouth. Few hours later, I heard a ruckus on the floor below and voices I hadn’t heard before. Suppose that was you guys. I managed to find an edge on the old chair they’d strapped me to, finally cut through the tape around my wrists about an hour ago.”

“You made all that racket up there that caught Stu’s attention?” Abigail asked.

“Yeah. I’d crept downstairs, seen there was only one of them guarding June, and I knew it was my only chance. When Stu came up, he was drunk, and I managed to overpower him.”

Quinn sipped his water. Outside, the wind still made that strange unnerving sound like ghosts humming.

“So why’d you come to Abandon in the first place?” Lawrence asked.

Quinn smiled. “Well, why are you here?”

Abigail sensed something in the current between the two men.

Lawrence said, “I was giving June and her husband a tour of the ghost town. They’re paranormal photographers.”

“That’s all, huh?”

Abigail realized what it was: distrust. These two historians sizing each other up, attempting to gauge how much the other one knew, what to let on, what to keep to themselves.

“What was it again that you were looking for up at the pass? I think I heard Abigail say something about—”

“All right, should we quit jerking each other off here?” Lawrence said. “Anyone who’s studied Abandon in depth knows that a sizable quantity of Packer’s gold has never been accounted for.”

“And you’ve been searching for it.”

It got quiet for a moment. Then Lawrence said, “Yeah. And you?”

Quinn nodded. “You an honest man, Lawrence?”

“Guess that depends.”

“What if I were to tell you that I have something in my jacket that might be able to help us out?”

“I’d be interested.”

“Interested enough for full disclosure?”

“Assuming it cuts both ways.”

Quinn reached into his pocket, handed Lawrence a rusted key attached to a nylon rope.

“Where’d you get this?” Lawrence asked.

“Full disclosure?”

“Yeah.”

“From an old man on his deathbed.”

“What’s it open?” Abigail asked.

“I’ve spent the last ten autumns of my life trying to find an answer to that. I know it doesn’t open anything in this crumbling mansion or the ghost town or the mill.”

Lawrence got up, limped over to the entrance of Emerald House, threw the doors open, stood watching the snow.

Abigail called out, “You all right?”

After a moment, he returned, stared down at them, and Abigail could hear the change in his voice as soon as he opened his mouth.

“There’s almost two feet of snow on the ground,” he said. “I know it’s late, and we’re all past the point of exhaustion, but with the snow dumping like this, an avalanche would make it impossible to find. We’d have to wait until next summer, when the snows broke. Besides, it’s not safe to be in Emerald House with all this snow piling up on the roof.”

Quinn stood up, said, “I don’t understand. What are you getting at?”